Reading: "Sin" Francis J. McConnell ISBE

Sin was introduced into the world by the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve. God created Adam and Eve to serve God and to tend the garden. There were two special trees in the garden. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God commanded that Adam and Eve were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then one day Eve was approached by the serpent, who was the personification of Satan an arch foe of God. We read in Genesis 3:1-3, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?' And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"(ESV)

Adam and Eve disobeyed an express command of God. The seductiveness of temptation is nowhere more forcefully stated than in this narrative. We read in Genesis 3:6 that the fruit of the tree was pleasant to look upon; it was good to eat; it was to be desired to make one wise; moreover, the tempter moved upon the woman by the method of the half truth, God had said that disobedience to the command would bring death; the tempter urged that disobedience would not bring death, implying that the command of God had meant that death would immediately follow the eating of the forbidden fruit. In the story the various avenues of approach of sin to the human heart are graphically suggested, but after the seductiveness of evil has thus been set forth, the fact remains that both transgressors knew they were transgressing (Genesis 3:2). Of course, the story is told in simple, naive fashion, but its enduring spiritual truth is at once apparent. There has been much discussion about sin during the Christian ages, but that discussion points to the willful disobedience to the commands of God.

1. Sin as Disobedience:

A fairly exact definition of sin based on Biblical data would be that sin is the transgression of the law of God, as 1 John 3:4 says, "Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness." Ordinarily, sin is defined simply as "the transgression of the law," but the idea of God is so completely the essential conception of the entire Biblical revelation that we can best define sin as disobedience to the law of God. It will be seen that primarily sin is an act, but from the very beginning it has been known that acts have effects, not only in the outward world of things and persons, but also upon him who commits the act.

2. Effects the Inner Life:

Hence, we find throughout the Scriptures a growing emphasis on the idea of the sinful act as not only a fact in itself, but also as a revelation of an evil disposition on the part of him who commits the act. As Genesis 6:5 says, "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

3. Involves All People:

Then also there is the further idea that deeds which so profoundly effect the inner life of an individual in some way have an effect in transmitting evil tendencies to the descendants of a sinful individual as Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned..." Hence, we reach shortly the conception, not only that sin is profoundly inner in its consequences, but that its effects reach outward also to an extent which practically involves the race. Around these various items of doctrine differing systems of theology have sprung up.

4. The Freedom of Humanity

In the early Biblical account of Genesis 3,  there is implicit the thought of the freedom of man to serve God or to reject God.

The Old and New Testaments do not say people are born into sin by forces over which they have no control. Satan tempts the woman aimed at her will. By easy steps, indeed, she moves toward the trangression, but the transgression is a transgression and nothing else. Of course, the evil deed is at once followed by attempts on the part of the transgressors to explain themselves, but the futility of the explanations is part of the point of the narrative.

In all discussion of the problem of freedom as relating to sin, we must remember that the Biblical revelation is from first to last busy with the thought of the righteousness and justice and love of God (Genesis 6:9 tells us that because of justice or righteousness, Noah walked with God).

God is free and he made Adam and Eve free to follow him or not.  Adam and Even choose to freely disobey with the hope that this act would bring them benefit.

Of course this does not mean that a person is free in all things. Freedom is limited in various ways, but we must retain enough of freedom in our thought of the constitution of people to make possible our holding fast to the Biblical idea of sin as transgression. Adam may have been free to sin or not to sin, but, "in his fall we sinned all."

5. A Transgression against Light:

The progress of the Biblical teaching concerning sin also would seem to imply that the transgression of the law must be a transgression committed against the light (Acts 17:30; 1 Timothy 1:13). To be sinful in any full sense of the word, a person must know that the course which he/she is adopting is an evil course.

This does not necessarily mean a full realization of the evil of the course. It is a fact, both of Biblical revelation and of revelation of all times, that people who commit sin do not realize the full evil of their deeds until after the sin has been committed (2 Samuel 12:1-13).

This is partly because:

1. the consequences of sin do not declare themselves until after the deed has been committed;

2. partly also because of the remorse of the conscience; and

3. partly from the humiliation at being discovered;

In some sense there must be an awareness of the evil of a course to make the adoption of the course sinful. E.g. in estimating the moral worth of Biblical characters, especially those of earlier times, we must keep in mind the standards of the times in which they lived. These standards were partly set by the customs of the social group, but the customs were, in many cases, made sacred by the claim of divine sanction. Hence, we find Biblical characters giving themselves readily to polygamy and warfare. The Scriptures themselves, however, throw light upon this problem. They refer to early times as times of ignorance, an ignorance which God Himself was willing to overlook (Acts 17:30). Even so ripe a moral consciousness as that of Paul felt that there was ground for forgiveness toward a course which he himself later considered evil, because in that earlier course he had acted ignorantly (Acts 26:9; 1 Timothy 1:13).

6. Sin in the Inner Self

The Bible shows us the advancement from sin conceived of as the violation of external commands to sin conceived of as an unwillingness to keep the commandments of God in the depths of the inner life. This has much Biblical support:

In the teaching of Jesus the emphasis upon the inner spirit as the essential factor in the moral life came to its climax. Jesus honored the Law, but He pushed the keeping of the Law back from the mere performance of externals to the inner stirrings of motives. It is not merely the actual commission of adultery, for example, that is sin; it is the lustful desire which leads to the evil glance; it is not merely the actual killing of the man that is murder; it is the spirit of hatred which makes the thought of murder welcome  (Matthew 5:21,27). Paul caught the spirit of Jesus and carried the thought of Jesus out into more elaborate and formal statements. There is a law of the inner life with which man should bind himself, and this law is the law of Christ's life itself (Romans 8:1-4). While both Jesus and Paul recognized the place of the formal codes in the moral life of individuals and societies, they wrought a great service for righteousness in setting on high the obligations upon the inner spirit. The follower of Christ is to guard the inmost thoughts of his heart. The commandments are not always precepts which can be given articulated statement; they are rather instincts and intuitions and glimpses which must be followed, even when we cannot give them full statement.

7. Sin as a Directional Force:

From this standpoint we are able to discern something of the force of the Biblical teaching as to whether sin is to be looked upon as directional. Very often sin is defined as the mere absence of goodness. The person who sins is one who does not keep the Law. This, however, is hardly the full Biblical conception. Of course, the person who does not keep the Law is regarded as a sinner, but the idea transgression is very often that of a directional refusal to keep the commandment and a breaking of the commandment. Two courses are set before people, one good, the other evil. The evil course is, in a sense, something directional in itself.

The evil person does not stand still; he/she moves as truly as the good person moves; he/she becomes a directional force for evil. In all our discussions we must keep clearly in mind the truth that evil is not something existing in and by itself. The Scriptures deal with evil people, and the evil people are as directional as their natures permit them to be. In the thought, e.g., of the writer who describes the conditions which, in his belief, made necessary the Flood, we have a directional state of evil contaminating almost the whole world (Genesis 6:11). 

And so, in the New Testament, Paul's thought of Roman society is of a world of sinful people moving with increasing swiftness toward the destruction of themselves and of all around them through doing evil.

8. Repentance:

It is with this seriousness of sin before us that we must think of forgiveness from sin. We can understand very readily that sin can be forgiven only on condition that people seek forgiveness in the name of the Lord. But forgiveness is to be taken seriously. In both the Old Testament and New Testament repentance is not merely a changed attitude of mind. It is an attitude which shows its sincerity by willingness to do everything possible to undo the evil which the sinner has wrought (Luke 19:8). If there is any consequence of the sinner's own sin which the sinner can himself make right, the sinner must in himself genuinely repent and make that consequence right. In one sense repentance is not altogether something done once for all. The seductiveness of sin is so great that there is need of humble and continuous watching (Galatians 6:1).

9. Forgiveness:

Scriptures teach that even though forgiveness is available the consequences of sin still exist. Change in the attitude of a sinner necessarily means change in the attitude of God. The sinner and God, however, are persons, and the Scriptures always speak of the problem of sin after a completely personal fashion.

The changed attitude affects the personal standing of the sinner in the sight of God. But God is the person who creates and carries on a moral universe. In carrying on that universe He must keep moral considerations in their proper place as the constitutional principles of the universe. While the father welcomes back the prodigal to the restored personal relations with himself, he cannot, in the full sense, blot out the fact that the prodigal has been a prodigal. The personal forgiveness may be complete, but the elimination of the consequences of the evil life is possible only through the long lines of healing set at work.

The person who has sinned against his body can find restoration from the consequences of the sin only in the forces which make for bodily healing. So also with the mind and will. The mind which has thought evil must be cured of its tendency to think evil. To be sure the healing processes may come almost instantly through the upheaval of a great experience, but on the other hand, the healing processes may have to work through long years. The will which has been given to sin may feel the stirrings of sin after the life of forgiveness has begun. All this is a revealing, not only of the power of sin, but of the constitutional morality of the universe. Forgiveness must not be interpreted in such terms as to make the transgression of the Law of God in any sense a light or trivial offense. But, on the other hand, we must not set limits to the healing power of the cross of God. With the removal of the power which makes for evil the possibility of development in real human experience is before the life. The word of the Master is that He "came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10:10). Sin is serious, because it thwarts life. Sin is given so large a place in the thought of the Biblical writers simply because it blocks the channel of movement toward the fullest life which the Scriptures teach is the aim of God in placing men in the world.

Francis J. McConnell